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> The dispute drew responses from two prominent figures in the open source world. Sure, but neither of those is an IP Lawyer. The actual IP Lawyer who turned

> The dispute drew responses from two prominent figures in the open source world. Sure, but neither of those is an IP Lawyer. The actual IP Lawyer who turned up and tried to engage, Richard Fontana, had his issue closed: https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/334 https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/334 Richard's point was this (quoted below): --- FWIW, that case is not really relevant to what we are/were talking about here. The question is whether you are truly an "author", or whether there was no (human) author. The general legal consensus has been that generative AI output is not copyrightable (without some special facts of some sort, perhaps). > If all of this code was somehow not copyrightable because someone wrote a prompt instead of directly editing the code, that would have pretty huge implications. That's exactly it. Your act of applying the MIT license with your copyright notice to code that you did not "directly edit" has enormous implications.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8mo ago
I don't think Fontana's reasoning holds up. I think it is more like photography. The case law is that a camera can't own a copyright, but a human can, even though all the pixels were produced by the camera with very little involvement at the pixel level by the human.
- waterTanuki 8mo ago
  A camera doesn't use unlicensed IP from other sources to produce an image. The makers of the camera explicitly gave you a right to own the photograph taken with the parts used to assemble the camera.
- ryukoposting 8mo ago
  Actually yes, Fontana's reasoning does hold up, and the USSC seems to agree: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-declines-hear-dispute-over-copyrights-ai-generated-material-2026-03-02/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-de... Prompting generally does not constitute authorship under US law.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 8mo ago
    That was not what the USSC case was about. It was about assigning copyright to an AI instead of a human.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8mo ago

I don't think Fontana's reasoning holds up. I think it is more like photography. The case law is that a camera can't own a copyright, but a human can, even though all the pixels were produced by the camera with very little involvement at the pixel level by the human.

waterTanuki 8mo ago
A camera doesn't use unlicensed IP from other sources to produce an image. The makers of the camera explicitly gave you a right to own the photograph taken with the parts used to assemble the camera.
ryukoposting 8mo ago
Actually yes, Fontana's reasoning does hold up, and the USSC seems to agree: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-declines-hear-dispute-over-copyrights-ai-generated-material-2026-03-02/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-de... Prompting generally does not constitute authorship under US law.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8mo ago
  That was not what the USSC case was about. It was about assigning copyright to an AI instead of a human.